This week Google announced it intends to acquire Nest, maker of the smart thermostat and smart smoke/carbon dioxide detector for $3.2 billion.
Nest CEO Tony Fadell announced with Google's support they intend to build even better devices to make life at home easier. It appears the Nest team will remain intact and continue under the leadership of the current CEO.

Of course lots of people in the media are predicting Google will begin spying on people in their home through the thermostat and other smart devices. Their point being that Google already has vast amounts of data on their users and now Google will know when you are home and when you're not home. With all this additional data being pushed to them from smart devices spread throughout the home, they predict Google will be able to push even more targeted ads to their users. Imagine, Google, knowing you just got home and your fridge is empty, you suddenly get an ad pushed to your smartphone from your local pizza delivery restaurant "Hungry?... Pizza Pizza can deliver you a steaming hot pizza in less than 30 minutes to 100 Main St., on sale now for just $9.99 ".

Often times the adoption of a technology requires a single company to establish the "standard", the way Apple established the standard for the SmartPhone. We believe Google's acquisition of Nest can only give the adoption of smarthome technology a giant boost with one of the world’s tech giants leading the way. We imagine Google integrating Android powered smart devices with their web services enabling two-way communication between you and your connected smarthome. 2014 may just be the year of the smarthome!